California Air Resources Board seeks public input on methane reduction plan

USA – The California Air Resources Board (CARB) put out a request for feedback last week as it seeks to meet the requirements of Senate Bill 1383, a 2016 law that obligates the state to reduce its methane emissions 40 per cent from 2013 levels by 2030.

California is shifting gears in its fight against agricultural methane emissions, moving away from voluntary programs toward potential mandatory regulations for dairy and livestock operations

Environmental advocates say they’re hoping CARB’s call for information on the best ways to track and reduce dairy methane, as it looks to implement the state law, will prompt new approaches for addressing livestock industry pollution.

“It can lead us to a better solution for the state’s manure problem,” said Phoebe Seaton, co-director of the Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability, an environmental justice group that works with rural communities in inland California. “We’ve been asking for many, many years for an honest and intensive assessment that will identify what an effective and fair regulatory framework is.”

For years, California has relied on offering grants and financial incentives to encourage farmers to adopt methane-reducing technologies like anaerobic digesters and improved manure management systems.

While these voluntary programs have achieved some success, they may not be sufficient to meet the state’s ambitious climate goals.

The dairy and livestock sectors produce more than half of California’s methane emissions and most of those come from dairy cow burps and manure.

According to a 2022 CARB report, current programs, coupled with statewide declines in animal populations, have California dairy and livestock operations on track to reach annual reductions of as much as 5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2030.

That’s a little over half of the 9 million metric tons in annual reductions the sector would need to make to reach the 40 percent goal by then.

The vast majority of current and projected dairy emission reductions driven by state programs come through California’s initiatives to fund anaerobic digesters—tarp-like devices that farmers install over their manure lagoons to capture methane gas, which they then burn to generate electricity or convert into renewable natural gas. 

The state supports these systems through the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s Dairy Digester Research and Development Program, whose grants are funded through the state’s cap-and-invest program, and CARB’s low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS), which credits farmers for the fuel they produce from digesters. 

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